Flight Plans

It was my first solo cross country flight. The little red and white Cessna was washed and shiny. As I was working at the local airport  as a young teen in exchange for discounted lessons, I made sure she sparkled. The weather was good, all the "what if's" gone over with my Instructor.

 It would be an easy trip, just head south, down a deep valley with mountains on both sides and lots of room to turn around, land, get my log book signed by someone at the airport to confirm my landing, and come on home after lunch and a pit stop.  I had soloed quickly and was doing well with my studies. This was going to be a piece of cake, I told myself.

I plotted out the course with the E6B. flight calculator. Short of the Star Trek episode that actually saw Spock use one to calculate warp drive trajectory or something, I've not seen one in years and  don't know if they even make them any more.  The only flying I've done in the last few years is the occasional local flight in a small aerobatic plane, just enough for currency, and given the cost, I'll probably leave the 'G' forces to the youngsters and just go putt around in a Cub.  But on that day, I was ready.

The takeoff was normal, my instructor waving from the ground. He had seven mostly grown children, all boys, a carpenter by trade. This was just time away from the house that made extra money for him. I headed south, my movements a familiar litany of rudder, aileron and throttle, the tiny two seat craft bobbing on the air as if it was attached to a gossamer line on a tiny fishing pole, held by a child. I didn't mind the minor turbulence, this was normal with the eddy and flow of air around the ridge lines, even when the wind was light.

Scanning for traffic, I got a really good luck at the mountains under which Dad's home was perched, a view so different than from below. It was winter, and although clear underneath the high overcast, I could see ice down below on the lakes, pushing up from the current, upended into minor dislocations and faults, tiny recreations of the mountains around, themselves formed through the chaos of earth and the finger of God. I think of the poem High Flight, which any young pilot worth his or her salt can recite, the words "touched the face of God".

 I can see how that airmen felt that, so long ago, when the skies erupted in war.  Looking at the light and shadow of cloud and earth, the ice that shimmers beneath the blue of the sky, the prop slicing into it as dawn cuts the darkness, I can see the places where hovers the God of light and darkness and creation. I imagine He was there on that very first flight, watching his creation take to the skies as birds, testing the limits of self and of machine, that self that is always our defining point.

Checking my watch against the paper fight plan, I could see I was at my first check point a bit early, more of a tail wind than I'd planned. I'd have to remember to adjust my calculation on landing, and plan on buying some extra fuel, even though I could make the round trip on the full tank's I left with. I wrote it on the flight plan, there next to "get logbook signed"  and "eat your sandwich".

I wasn't quite sure how I ended up here I'd always been fascinated by trains and cars, anything machined that moved. I took that first lesson on a whim, daring myself to dare, and I was hooked. When I got the job at the airport, I heard my Dad say "she won't last a week" the work as physical as anything I'd ever done, driving a big gas truck, hauling out the hoses to the plane, climbing ladders up and fueling. We won't mention to OSHA that float plane I fueled with a ladder on top of a picnic table to reach. But I lasted a week, and then some, sitting in my room at night with my books and my study guides saying "I'm going to be a pilot" as a mantra to parents that love but don't always believe.

Underneath the plane now, was the outskirts of the big city, and I got on the radio to communicate with the controllers, as I flew throw an area that would not result in a meet and greet with some large jetliner inbound. The city sprawled below, so much bigger than I'd pictured, even all the times the family would drive there to shop.  With a great handoff to the next sector by the controller, flight following was terminated as they were busy, but I stayed on to monitor just to make sure there wasn't someone in my area at my altitude. 

Just two more cities and it would be my destination  There's one little city, looking a whole lot smaller, than I expected. The light dusting of snow made everything look pure and clear, and also exactly the same.

I checked my map, checked my time.  I should be at my destination but what I'm seeing is just a expanse of open ground.  I hear my instructor say, don't just use pilotage, use the VOR, an instrument that tunes into a ground based station and lets you track to or from it.  There we are, I'd passed it, but only by a couple of miles.  Well this is embarrassing, I hope the folks on the ground weren't watching me fly right overhead, then turn around. 

Listening for anyone on the frequency at the little country airport, I made my announcement, downwind to base to final.  I was feeling rather proud of myself. Ok, I made a little error in pilotage, but one thing I could do was fly this thing, I told myself.  I could just picture greasing it on, then walking into the terminal, red ponytail flying in the breeze and presenting my logbook for signature, as someone said,  "student pilot? Well the way you nailed that landing, we're surprised!"

Oh, the dreams of the naive and young.

Coming up over the numbers on the end of the runway, I reduced the power, flaps out at full, carb heat applied, waiting for the soft and gentle birdlike  "chirp chirp" of the wheels on the pavement as from the terminal, people made small polite golf tournament clapping.

HONK! HONK!

No, it wasn't Canadian geese flying over head but the sound of my wheels impacting, let's just say "firmly," at which the airplane bounced   Yes.  Bounced. Not bouncing so high, I need to abort the landing, but bouncing like a baby Kangaroo on crack. All I could do was make sure the nose was up, and on the centerline, using power to gently ease it on down, not once, but twice (maybe three, I'm pleading the Fifth). The little training Cessna's are built for the occasional kangaroo landing, doesn't make it any prettier.

Oh, THIS is embarrassing.

I taxi gingerly up to the fuel pumps.  If this airplane could put it's head down in shame, it would.  I knew the bounce was neither high nor hard enough to do any damage to anything other than my ego, but still.

I get out and two young, good looking guys are standing out by the fuel island.  It just keeps getting better.  One of them says "Student pilot!  Here I'll sign your logbook".

Gee, how did they know?

The flight home was uneventful, the wind dying down a bit, the air smooth, time to think back over to the first leg.  My little bird just scooted on through the sky, the clouds that made up the high overcast earlier drifting further apart, shafts of light between like fence posts behind which watched the rear guards of fate.

My previously swelling ego seriously bruised, I realized what my instructor told me time and again "it's when you think you're getting good, that you're going to kill yourself, that' when you have to be the most vigilant".  He was probably fifty years old, ancient in my eyes, and had likely been at that crossroads of destiny and free will more than once, that junction that can easily be permanent, but like most  teens, I didn't listen half of the time.

I thought to my other job, there at the funeral home, one that my friends teased me about, but less than when I did career day with the forensic pathologists.  I just did simple office things, tidied up and made coffee for the families, but the environment was not either scary or depressing for me. I was young and full of life, and everyone that was brought in here, was, you know,  OLD.

 Besides the business was successful, a brand new facility, and they paid more than minimum wage.  Then one day they brought in two bodies, making sure I was in the office, as although I would sometimes fetch things for them as they prepared someone's family member, as such sights did not bother me, they said this one was one I did NOT want to see, and locked the door.  It was two brothers, high school students, not classmates of mine, but of another school,  killed in a head on collision on a late night.  Alcohol was not involved, simply youth, bad timing and poor choices.  On that day, I realized, that there are some lines, that if you cross, you can never come back.

I didn't know on this fight back, that thirty years later, I'd drive past that funeral home, the structure now empty for several  years, the economy taking a toll, the form of a place where the dead were once prepared and grieved not the sort of place one wants to buy and turn into a Chuck E. Cheese. It was as grey and desolate as a tomb, the faded Realtors sign in front the only sign that anyone had been here in years. There is nothing inside, no future, no life, nothing but the echoes of shades within, impervious to time or alteration by their very weightlessness, no bodies left to be buried, just the shapes of memory, recollections that lie as dust by those that drive past, unseeing. 

I didn't, know, that as we left it behind us in the rearview mirror, that I'd think of this flight, thankful for a God that watched out for a young airman, one who had some serious lessons to learn.

As the little Cessna neared the airport, I didn't yet know of such things, I just knew that I was even miles out from the airport and I needed to ready myself and my craft.  I thought of old pilots and bold pilots, and how easy it is to assume that grown up trait of being convinced of your own ability simply by your own silent superiority.  I thought of the sound metal makes as it bends, and the sound eyes make as they weep.

"Acme Airport. Unicom, N714 Golf Juliet on the forty-five to downwind"

From below, a sound of a voice that had suffered much, and learned as well, a voice I'd best listen to a little closer in the future.

"N714 Golf Juliet, no reported traffic, welcome back B."